BP Oil Spill: Effects on us, and perhaps the future?

No, because I pointed out they try hard to NOT have spills in the first place, so no one considers them acceptable.

Acceptable is not a word I would use. Everyone trys hard to prevent it from happening in the first place, but as we know, accidents do happen, and if you do have an accident and that leads to a blowout on the well, and then the BOP fails, the ONLY permenant solution is to drill a relief well.

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What is accepted as the standard response for a blow out followed by a failed BOP is that a relief well has to be drilled and that means that in this worse case scenario the leak will last for months.

So

The drill procedures and hardware and training and inspections are designed such that this should almost never happen, but one can't promise that it won't ever happen.

It's just like modern day commerial flying, we fly 20,000 scheduled aircraft flights a day in the US and we can go a year or more without a fatal crash, but we KNOW that eventually even though our procedures and hardware and training and inspections are designed such that crashes shouldn't ever happen.

One will.

And a hundred or more people will die.

And then the gov agency in charge, the NTSB will investigate and find out why, and if needed, the regulations and procedures and hardware and training will be altered to prevent that from happening again.

Just like we are doing in the case of this Well blowout and rig explosion.

The difference is we don't have a bunch of yahoos on the internet screaming for the CEO of USAir to be brought up under criminal charges.

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More than 30,000 water and sediment samples taken in the Gulf of Mexico so far show that the Gulf is recovering from the BP Deepwater Horizon oil spill, a top NOAA scientist said Thursday during a teleconference.

Janet Baran, a National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration scientist who is co-leading the subsurface oil monitoring program, said samples taken in about 10,000 locations in shallow to deep water, as well as the ocean floor, show no visible signs of oil.

Oil content of the samples is now being described as being in parts per billion rather than million, representing a thousand-fold decrease in the amount of oil in the water, she said.

"We've seen a distinct decrease over time ... and it's starting to get back to the ocean's natural hydrocarbon footprint," she said.

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!.8 million gallons of a toxin has been point source dumped into the midwater and scattering layers of the Gulf of Mexico. In the dumping it has been mixed with millions of gallons of hot, high pressure erupting crude oil.

The primary effect was to reduce the amount of that oil reaching the surface, where it would have been 1) BP's responsibility to collect, at great expense 2) BP's civil liability, for the damages it did if not collected 3) BP's direct expense, in royalties owed the US government, for each visible and more easily counted barrel.

The toxin so dumped had never been tested for that use or in any relevant circumstances, and little or no relevant information about its likely effects was available to the government officials who are alleged to have approved this dumping. In addition, the amount approved by these ignorant officials was greatly exceeded by BP, for reasons not so far made public.

By all appearances, then, a possible disaster involving a calculated crime has been committed, including government officials in collusion with, or otherwise improperly influenced by, a multinational oil company. That is not a farfetched possibility, either from recent history or the available circumstances - it is the likely event.

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Actually the Committee has looked into the details of the Dispersent use and their findings are QUITE different than most of your assertions.

I've selected parts of the report that deal with the issues you raised and then bolded those that are in direct contradiction to your statements:

The use of dispersants in the aftermath of the Macondo deepwater well explosion was controversial for three reasons. First, the total amount of dispersants used was unprecedented: 1.84 million gallons. Second, 771,000 of those gallons were applied at the wellhead, located 5,067 feet below the surface. Little or no prior testing had been done on the effectiveness and potential adverse environmental consequences of subsea dispersant use, let alone at those volumes. Third, the existing federal regulatory system pre-authorized dispersant use in the Gulf of Mexico without any limits or guidelines as to amounts or duration. Faced with an emergency, the government had to make decisions about high-volume and subsea dispersant use within time frames that denied officials the opportunity to gather necessary information. The resulting uncertainty even fueled unfounded suspicions that BP was using dispersants without authorization from the government in an effort to mask the oil and to limit its ultimate liability.

Using dispersants to remove oil from the water surface has several potential benefits. First, less oil will float ashore to adversely affect shorelines and fragile estuarine environments. Second, animals and birds that float on or wade through the water surface may be less exposed to oil. Third, dispersants may accelerate the rate at which oil biodegrades. Smaller droplets have a larger surface-area-to-volume ratio, which in theory should allow microorganisms greater access to the oil, and speed their rate of consumption. The expected acceleration of this biodegradation is often cited as a major reason to use dispersants.

The oil spill response contingency plans applicable to the Gulf (Regions 4 and 6 within the National Response Plan framework) pre-authorized the use of a list of specific dispersants.Neither of the plans limited the overall volume or duration of such pre-authorized use. With the permission of the Federal On-Scene Coordinator, BP applied 14,654 gallons of the dispersant Corexit, which was on the approved list, on the surface during the week of April 20-26, 2010.

BP itself performed three tests, based on protocols established by EPA and the Coast Guard. On May 15, 2010, the testing for effectiveness and toxicity that had been completed prompted EPA and the Coast Guard to announce their joint approval of subsea dispersant use with the condition that BP conduct further monitoring. The EPA Administrator, Lisa Jackson, made the approval decision on behalf of EPA herself and has since publicly acknowledged the difficulty of making this decision with the limited amount of scientific information then available. Considerations related to response worker health and ease of application—subsea application would minimize the necessary human contact with dispersants, and could occur at night and in foul weather—reportedly played a role in the decision to approve the method.

On June 30, 2010, EPA released results of its own testing of eight dispersants. EPA had conducted acute toxicity tests with two Gulf of Mexico aquatic species, and in vitro cytotoxicity (cell damage) and endocrine screening assays using human cell lines. EPA’s results indicated that none of the eight dispersants displayed significant endocrine disrupting activity. It also suggested that Corexit 9500 was not overall more toxic than alternatives

After the well was capped on July 15, 2010, there was virtually no further use of dispersants.

Conclusions

The government was not adequately prepared for the use of dispersants to address such a large oil spill. Notwithstanding the National Contingency Plan’s express requirements for planning regarding the use of dispersants, including pre-authorization to deal with emergencies, EPA clearly did not anticipate the potential demands of an oil spill of the kind the nation faced after the Macondo well explosion. In particular, EPA did not consider, in its roles on the National Response Team and the relevant Regional Response Teams, the possibility that dispersants might have to be used in the massive volumes required in the Gulf. And EPA did not consider the distinct possibility that massive volumes of dispersants might be needed at the subsea level.

As a result, the National Incident Commander, the EPA Administrator, and the NOAA Administrator were seriously handicapped when the Macondo well explosion occurred and decisions had to be made immediately in the absence of adequate contingency planning. These officials had to make difficult choices with insufficient information about the critical trade-offs identified by the National Academy of Sciences for the use of dispersants: the value of the dispersants in reducing the harm caused by released oil versus the potential risks of harm from the dispersants themselves. The limited toxicity data they possessed was questionable and limited to acute lethal effects on two estuarine species. It did not consider potential environmental persistence resulting from repeated or continuous sublethal effects, such as endocrine disruption.

Given the conditions under which officials like Admiral Allen and EPA Administrator Jackson were acting, there is no clear evidence that their decisions to authorize high volumes of dispersants, including at the subsea, were unreasonable. They instead appear to have acted reasonably in the difficult circumstances in which they were placed. For instance, officials directed the Regional Response Teams to seek input as quickly as possible from fifty expert scientists. On June 4, 2010, the experts reported a consensus that ―use of dispersants and the effects of dispersing oil into the water column has generally been less environmentally harmful than allowing the oil to migrate on the surface into the sensitive wetlands and near shore coastal habitats. In the experts’ view, though gaps in relevant information existed, the environmental trade-off between the deep-ocean ecosystem and the shoreline made dispersants an acceptable choice.

The fact that BP itself (or its oil spill response contractors) directly applied the dispersants authorized by the federal government led to the impression that BP rather than federal officials was in charge of decisions regarding dispersant use. Commission staff has not discovered any evidence that such a usurpation of government authority occurred. Nor could Commission staff conclude, based on interviews with Coast Guard responders, that BP or its contractors ever intentionally violated government directives regarding dispersant use (e.g., regarding the permitted locations for such use). Yet, the impression remained and fueled public distrust of the decision to use dispersants.

Finally, federal officials must from the outset leave no question in the public’s mind regarding who is in charge during an emergency response, especially when, as happened with dispersants, public concern with the wisdom of the government’s decisions is great. Here, a mistaken impression was created in the minds of too many that BP was making the decisions based on its own interests.

Apparently you want to drag this out, in the face of the obvious facts of the event (ineffective response at all levels, major disaster in the Gulf).

OK:

adoucette said:

Actually the Committee has looked into the details of the Dispersent use and their findings are QUITE different than most of your assertions

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The committee has no relevant findings in this matter, because they have not seen the internal records of BP's decision process, nor have they reviewed the role of BP in the original formulation of the relevant regulations. For example:

article said:

The oil spill response contingency plans applicable to the Gulf (Regions 4 and 6 within the National Response Plan framework) pre-authorized the use of a list of specific dispersants. Neither of the plans limited the overall volume or duration of such pre-authorized use.

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Nor did they limit the depth or physical circumstances of such use - the intention was obviously for surface mitigation, but that was not formalized, despite BP's certain knowledge that deepwater drilling presented much different risks.

In other words, the mishap mitigation plan filed by BP did not even address, did not even mention, the volume, duration, nature, or physical circumstances of the actual risks of the actual wells being drilled. Yet the EPA apparently "approved" it.

Those are all serious "oversights". The Committee has not investigated how they came to be - we know this because such investigation would require subpoenaed testimony from several levels of executives at BP, Halliburton, TransOcean, etc, and no such testimony has been given.

That is just one example of one of the issues facing the Committee. The history of BP's relationship with the DOJand the EPA and OSHA et al (through its major contractors as well), the current attempts by BP to control information about the event and its aftermath, and the general strategy of subterfuge in apparent attempts to limit its financial liability as well as its executives' criminal exposure, are a partial list of others.

article said:

The EPA Administrator, Lisa Jackson, made the approval decision on behalf of EPA herself and has since publicly acknowledged the difficulty of making this decision with the limited amount of scientific information then available.

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That's an admission of the serious "oversights" referred to above. That statement triggers serious investigation - with subpoenaed testimony from the corporate executives involved - into how this well received EPA approval without the necessary scientific information on file, or anything else even approaching an adequate mitigation plan for a blowout.

article said:

Given the conditions under which officials like Admiral Allen and EPA Administrator Jackson were acting, there is no clear evidence that their decisions to authorize high volumes of dispersants, including at the subsea, were unreasonable

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Comedy gold. Given the scene Obama's EPA was thrown into, they did the best they could - - yeah, and so?

Again: we are focused on one small issue - the dispersants. We haven't even considered the rest of the Keystone Kops behavior we saw from everyone officially involved in this clusterfuck. It would be comedy if they hadn't killed so many people and trashed such a significant piece of ocean.

Meanwhile:

report said:

The fact that BP itself (or its oil spill response contractors) directly applied the dispersants authorized by the federal government led to the impression that BP rather than federal officials was in charge of decisions regarding dispersant use. Commission staff has not discovered any evidence that such a usurpation of government authority occurred. Nor could Commission staff conclude, based on interviews with Coast Guard responders, that BP or its contractors ever intentionally violated government directives regarding dispersant use (e.g., regarding the permitted locations for such use). Yet, the impression remained and fueled public distrust of the decision to use dispersants.

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And that impression, with the distrust, is going to remain, since it seems to be the obvious interpretation of the facts at hand, until BP's actual decision procedure and records of action are public information. That will require subpoenaed records and testimony - because BP isn't talking without them.

article said:

Janet Baran, a National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration scientist who is co-leading the subsurface oil monitoring program, said samples taken in about 10,000 locations in shallow to deep water, as well as the ocean floor, show no visible signs of oil.

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That's good news. Maybe they didn't miss anything. Maybe no plumes of toxic dispersant escaped their notice, also, and the chain of ecological effects they set in motion will not amplify, and the "invisible" signs of oil will not be significant, and so forth and so on for the next ten or twenty years. All of that thoroughly and expensively monitored, of course - the current overlooking of the plume problem will be rectified, the ecological effects in the coastal swamps more carefully considered, etc - at BP's expense.

That should have no effect on the Congressional investigation, of course, right? Arson is arson, even if the burn victims recover more quickly than feared.

Except the Commission did not once claim that this part of their investigation was hampered by lack of Subpoena power.

But the investigation was obviously detailed, reviewed testimony of the key players and documents (see report) and after that it finds EXACTLY the opposite of what you claimed and that's your reponse?

LOL

Let me post the key parts again since you didn't get it the last time:

Commission said:

a mistaken impression was created in the minds of too many that BP was making the decisions based on its own interests

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As in exactly the same as YOUR mistaken impression that you posted here.

Commission said:

there is no clear evidence that their decisions to authorize high volumes of dispersants, including at the subsea, were unreasonable

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Exactly the opposite of your conclusion.

Commissioin said:

Commission staff has not discovered any evidence that such a usurpation of government authority occurred. Nor could Commission staff conclude, based on interviews with Coast Guard responders, that BP or its contractors ever intentionally violated government directives regarding dispersant use

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Commission said:

771,000 of those gallons were applied at the wellhead

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Vs your "!.8 million gallons of a toxin has been point source dumped into the midwater and scattering layers of the Gulf of Mexico"

At least get your basic facts straight.

iceaura said:

In other words, the mishap mitigation plan filed by BP did not even address, did not even mention, the volume, duration, nature, or physical circumstances of the actual risks of the actual wells being drilled. Yet the EPA apparently "approved" it.

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Actually there are TWO plans, an Area plan, and the Well specific plan, since they overlap. The Well specific plan indeed does discuss all of the above (indeed, the worst case was far greater than the actual spill)

And, again, get your facts straight, the EPA is NOT the approving agency for Spill Response plans, that was the function of the now disbanded Mineral and Mining Service or MMS.

The EPA has input and requirements under a completely separate National Contingency Plan that was created via the Clean Water Act and Oil Polution Act of 1990 (passed after Exxon Valdez spill).

The Clean Water Act expressly contemplates the use of dispersants in response to oil spills.
Section 311(d)(2)(G) of the Act requires that the federal National Contingency Plan for oil spill response contain a schedule identifying:
(i) dispersants . . . , if any, that may be used in carrying out the Plan,
(ii) the waters in which such dispersants . . . may be used, and
(iii) the quantities of such dispersant . . . which can be used safely in such waters . . . .
In addition, subsection (G) requires each schedule to provide for use of other, non-listed dispersants: [T]he President, or his delegate, may, on a case-by-case basis, identify the dispersants, other chemicals, and other spill mitigating devices and substances which may be used, the waters in which they may be used, and the quantities which can be used safely in such waters.

Indeed it was The National Contingency Plan, for which Corexit was an EPA approved dispersant that allowed for the PRE AUTHORIZATION of its use to control the oil spill by the first responders, and later by the various Admirals in charge (Landry then Watson then Zukunft) as the Federal On-Scene Coordinator.

iceaura said:

we are focused on one small issue - the dispersants. We haven't even considered the rest of the Keystone Kops behavior we saw from everyone officially involved in this clusterfuck. It would be comedy if they hadn't killed so many people and trashed such a significant piece of ocean.

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No, this was a specific report on Dispersants I was presenting that refuted many of the specific issues you raised about dispersants and their use. Other issues will be delt with in other posts when the information becomes available, since a completely different investigation is ongoing about the cause of the explosions and deaths, and that's being done by the DoI and the USCG.

iceaura said:

And that impression, with the distrust, is going to remain, since it seems to be the obvious interpretation of the facts at hand,

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Only for morons who aren't capable of understanding the following: "Commission staff has not discovered any evidence that such a usurpation of government authority occurred. Nor could Commission staff conclude, based on interviews with Coast Guard responders, that BP or its contractors ever intentionally violated government directives regarding dispersant use"

Again, all you seem to do is want to make allegations without anything to back it up, then when shown that the alleagations you have made are unfounded, you persist in saying that you are right.

No, this was a specific report on Dispersants I was presenting that refuted many of the specific issues you raised about dispersants and their use.

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It did not address any of the specific issues I raised.

adoucette said:

Except the Commission did not once claim that this part of their investigation was hampered by lack of Subpoena power.

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So? That might account for the careful wording - "no evidence of" etc - but does not deal with the obvious point.

adoucette said:

there is no clear evidence that their decisions to authorize high volumes of dispersants, including at the subsea, were unreasonable
”
Exactly the opposite of your conclusion.

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No, exactly agreeing with my perfectly clear point - you need subpoenas, to get evidence of that kind. Without subpoena power, you get weasel worded non-conclusions like that one (notice how the whole thing was contingent on accepting the situation as given? Notice how that aspect was simply omitted, mentioned briefly in passing - avoided, even?).

adoucette said:

Actually there are TWO plans, an Area plan, and the Well specific plan, since they overlap. The Well specific plan indeed does discuss all of the above (indeed, the worst case was far greater than the actual spill)

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There were, as we clearly observed, no actual and adequate plans in place.

adoucette said:

The EPA has input and requirements under a completely separate National Contingency Plan that was created via the Clean Water Act and Oil Polution Act of 1990 (passed after Exxon Valdez spill).

The Clean Water Act expressly contemplates the use of dispersants in response to oil spills.

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I already quoted the EPA head (quoted your quote, actually) admitting that they were flying blind, with no source of info except BP's contracted technicians - making all their decisions "based on the information available". The reasons for the large differences between what the EPA "requires" and what the EPA actually had on hand when the well blew would be an important subject for investigation - with subpoenas, of course. No sense in fooling around, with a multinational oil company to take on.

adoucette said:

Only for morons who aren't capable of understanding the following: "Commission staff has not discovered any evidence that such a usurpation of government authority occurred. Nor could Commission staff conclude, based on interviews with Coast Guard responders, that BP or its contractors ever intentionally violated government directives regarding dispersant use"

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You want to be reading the political weasel wording with a bit more care, methinks. That quote very carefully says absolutely nothing about the actual course of events, or any of the issues I have listed here.

Anyone can see, from that quote, exactly why any investigation into this disaster requires subpoena power. Could not "conclude", "based on interviews with Coast Guard responders" what BP "intentionally" did? c'mon. That is impotence talking. That is whitewash in words.

Although on second thought one must sympathize with the Committee. How do they report on the fact that they are getting their information about BP's decisions, intentions, and actions from interviews with Coast Guard personnel, perhaps augmented with some local fishermen's anecdotes and maybe a local Boy Scout troop leader? They want to keep a little dignity for themselves, no doubt. Their skill at phrasing their "findings" has other motivation than mere ass-covering, then.

Oh, BS, it completely trashed your arguments, you are just not smart enough to realize it.

You said:

Nothing that would even inform, let alone justify, BP's use of them in this spill, which appeared to be motivated by a desire to conceal the extent of the spill and the damage

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Commission: The resulting uncertainty even fueled unfounded suspicions that BP was using dispersants without authorization from the government in an effort to mask the oil and to limit its ultimate liability.

we have no way of knowing why BP far exceeded its quantity approvals, and used them clandestinely in ways not specifically or publicly considered by the EPA etc

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The quantity was listed, and a million gallons less injected than you claimed and
Commission: The fact that BP itself (or its oil spill response contractors) directly applied the dispersants authorized by the federal government led to the impression that BP rather than federal officials was in charge of decisions regarding dispersant use. Commission staff has not discovered any evidence that such a usurpation of government authority occurred.

ie No Clandestine use, no exceeding of its approvals.

the amount approved by these ignorant officials was greatly exceeded by BP

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As above, the Commission found no evidence of that.

need to know what is in Corexit and why it was used in preference to apparently (as far as we know) better stuff, for example.

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As previously provided the formula is on the EPA site, so they know what is in it.

Commission; On June 30, 2010, EPA released results of its own testing of eight dispersants. EPA had conducted acute toxicity tests with two Gulf of Mexico aquatic species, and in vitro cytotoxicity (cell damage) and endocrine screening assays using human cell lines. EPA’s results indicated that none of the eight dispersants displayed significant endocrine disrupting activity. It also suggested that Corexit 9500 was not overall more toxic than alternatives

Commission: The resulting uncertainty even fueled unfounded suspicions that BP was using dispersants without authorization from the government in an effort to mask the oil and to limit its ultimate liability.

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A self-contradiction - suspicions that are so reasonably "fueled" are not, by definition, unfounded.

Nor does the rest of the Report lay them at all to rest - more fuel, instead.

adoucette said:

The quantity was listed, and a million gallons less injected than you claimed and

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My argument did not depend on the quantity injected. If you want to accept BP's unsupported number of 770k gallons dumped below the surface, no one has - what was the Commission's phrase - "clear evidence" otherwise; my point remains, though.

adoucette said:

the amount approved by these ignorant officials was greatly exceeded by BP
”
As above, the Commission found no evidence of that.

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They found no evidence of much of anything BP did, which is no surprise: Supposing they had the desire, they lacked the means.

adoucette said:

As previously provided the formula is on the EPA site, so they know what is in it.

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A partial list of contents is not a formula.

adoucette said:

Commission; On June 30, 2010, EPA released results of its own testing of eight dispersants.

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I have no idea why you think that irrelevant bit of testing has anything to do with this discussion, but you are free to keep posting it if you want to.

The point is none of your previous assertions have held up to examination by the Commission based on the best available evidence and so that leaves YOUR assertions as the ones that are unfounded.

For instance your CLAIM that BP was using dispersants without authorization, apparently has no basis in fact, or your CLAIM that the amounts BP used were greater than authorized also has no basis in fact.

The point is none of your previous assertions have held up to examination by the Commission based on the best available evidence

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Uh, my assertions are mostly about the "best available evidence". They describe the appearance of events as an argument for their investigation, for the discovery of better evidence.

Even of the ones that aren't, none have been examined by the Commission. The Commission lacks subpoena power, for starters, and therefore has no way to examine any of my assertions about BP's possible motives and behavior either during the event or in the years prior. The other assertions similarly.

Nope, the commission did not claim their research was hampered by lack of Subpeona so to claim it was, is without merit. Clearly if the Commission had asked for something and it had been refused they would have mentioned that lack of support. They have not.

What they did do is show that your assertions were unsupported by the available evidence.

Indeed, since I posted their refutations of your claims you haven't posted ONE THING to support them.

The oil spill is so sad and massive in scope.
Try to imagine for a second if you were a fish and your planet had been completely ravished so we pay 3 cents less at the pumps. Or 2 cents less on a loaf of bread.
It's horrible.

No, they are not evil.
And your master plan to boycott BP is pointless.

BP makes almost ALL of its profit from Exploration and Production and only a tiny percent from something you could actually boycott.

Of the ~$25 Billion in profits in 2009, only $743 million came from Refining and Marketing, and only a small amount of that would be affected by a boycott at the pumps.

Arthur

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Hah, I have no master plan.

Try to use your conscious mind and think of what evil is.
If the destruction of billions and billions of life forms is not evil then what could you possibly consider evil?
For money. They are billionaires who do it for more money.
All companies who destroy our great planet for money are evil.
Money can not buy the feeling you get when you gaze off of a mountain peak, when you stand on the island shores and the warm sun hits your face, when you are at total peace with the world, maybe even in the Louisiana Bayou. I am relatively young, but all that aside in my life time alone strip miners have destroyed my child hood play place. No amount of money can replace life. That my friend is most definitely evil.

Try to use your conscious mind and think of what evil is.
If the destruction of billions and billions of life forms is not evil then what could you possibly consider evil?
For money. They are billionaires who do it for more money.
All companies who destroy our great planet for money are evil.
Money can not buy the feeling you get when you gaze off of a mountain peak, when you stand on the island shores and the warm sun hits your face, when you are at total peace with the world, maybe even in the Louisiana Bayou. I am relatively young, but all that aside in my life time alone strip miners have destroyed my child hood play place. No amount of money can replace life. That my friend is most definitely evil.

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Every company produces what ever they produce for Money, there is nothing EVIL about that.

What you seem to miss is none of the companies that make up the Oil industry drill oil for their own use.

People DEMAND oil and Natural gas because we use 3.5 BILLION gallons of oil each day and 3,200 BILLION cubic ft of Natural Gas each day and 37 BILLION pounds of coal each day, and if we weren't so demanding of this enormous daily use of fossil fuels then we wouldn't be strip mining and we wouldn't have to be drilling in risky locations 1 mile under water and 3 miles under the crust to get us this oil.

So maybe you should try looking in the mirror and figure out who is buying the Oil, and Gas and Coal and not simply blame the companies and men who risk their lives to get it for you.

There were, as we clearly observed, no actual and adequate plans in place.

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From NOAA Transcript, Lubchenko's Oct 4th Speech

From the early hours after the spill began, science began guiding the decisions.

At 11p.m. on April 20, a massive explosion erupted on the Deepwater Horizon rig. An estimated 700,000 gallons of diesel fueled the explosion and fire.

By 2a.m., the newly constituted Unified Command in Robert, Louisiana, had at its fingertips a trajectory forecast showing where the oil would be headed should it appear. This trajectory forecast was produced by NOAA.

Less than 20 hours later, the first spot weather forecast was issued by NOAA’s National Weather Service Forecast Office in Slidell, Louisiana at the request of the Unified Command. These special forecasts consider time, topography, and weather, providing more detailed, timely, and specific information than regular zone forecasts.

These two NOAA science tools – oil trajectory forecasts and specialized weather forecasts – were critical elements of the good science that enabled informed response throughout the effort.
How were these tools so helpful?

They told responders where to deploy boom, where to skim and burn, and they told us which fisheries might have to be closed.

They gave us the vital information needed to mount a smart, tactical response.

Day after day, from the early hours after the explosion until 4 months later when the sheen of oil had not been visible on the surface for 3 weeks, these tools provided information that told us where the oil was headed 24, 48, and 72 hours in advance.

Scientists in NOAA’s war room in Seattle ran oceanographic and atmospheric models day after day, using the latest satellite, plane, and ship observations to initialize models and predict patterns of movement. Day after day, National Weather Service meteorologists produced spot weather forecasts; with over 4,000 having been produced from the Slidell office alone.

When responders had to make decisions about where to lay the boom, the information was at hand to inform their decisions: weather forecasts, trajectory maps, wind, tide and current data.
Science was transformed into a tool that people could use for real-time decision making.
Science also provided guidance for NOAA’s second concern: seafood safety.

---

To protect people, NOAA closed fisheries as the first line of defense to prevent contaminated seafood from entering the marketplace. The fishermen in Plaquemines Parish supported our closing oiled waters, but they also wanted life lines - safe places to fish. And so scientific information – the location of oil and forecasts showing us where the oil likely was going – guided NOAA’s decisions on where we would close fisheries and where areas could stay open safely.

At the height of closures, 37% or 88,522 square miles of federal Gulf waters was closed to fishing. Today, 60% of the previously closed areas have been re-opened under the protocol and sampling regime agreed to by NOAA, the FDA, and the Gulf states. Today 13% of the Federal waters in the Gulf are still closed to fishing. [As of Oct. 1, 11% of Federal waters are closed.]

Like closures, fishery re-openings depend on good science.

NOAA, the Food and Drug Administration, and the Gulf states agreed to a science-based protocol for re-opening a closed area. Three criteria must be satisfied for re-opening: (1) The area must be free of sheen for 30 days, (2) the area must not be likely to become contaminated in the future, and (3) seafood from the area must pass multiple, rigorous laboratory tests to ensure it is free from oil or dispersant contaminants. If all criteria are met, an area will be reopened. In addition, NOAA and the FDA are conducting dockside and market-based sampling as extra measures of safety.

I have confidence in our protocols and have enjoyed Gulf seafood each trip I’ve made to the region.

The third of NOAA’s five oil spill responsibilities is protecting wildlife and habitat. NOAA is responsible for sea turtles, dolphins, whales and other marine protected species.

Almost immediately after the explosion, we began collecting baseline data. We conducted overflights almost daily to monitor marine mammals, turtles, specific fisheries, wetlands and marshes. NOAA research ships initiated ongoing investigations of the impact of the oil on marine mammals and fisheries.

NOAA experts are part of the Federal team documenting impacts as well as rescuing and rehabilitating sea turtles. Five of seven species of sea turtles live in the Gulf. All are threatened or endangered. Any additional mortality can be a serious threat to any of the species.

To date, 592 turtles have died, primarily Kemp’s Ridley turtles. NOAA is conducting autopsies to understand the cause of death. And we realize that hidden casualties are likely.

In parallel, we have been engaged in two aggressive efforts to save other turtles.

NOAA led a focused effort to take boats out to oiled areas to find and rescue turtles, and rehabilitate them if needed. To date, 126 have been cleaned and released at sea, and 330 have been brought back to land for rehabilitation. In August, Admiral Allen and I had the great pleasure of releasing the first 23 of these rehabilitated and healthy turtles. What a joy it was to watch them zoom off into the Gulf, stop to snatch a gulp of air, then disappear beneath the waves. To date, 158 rehabilitated turtles have been released back to their proper habitat.

Our second major turtle effort focused on eggs and hatchlings. The spill took place just as many loggerhead turtles were ready to lay their eggs on Gulf beaches. To keep vulnerable nests out of harm’s way, NOAA joined the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service to transplant some nests to oil-free locations. We won’t know the success of these efforts for years, but we are hopeful.

Scientific knowledge of turtle physiology, ecology, and behavior guided all of the efforts, helping us know where to look for animals affected by the spill, and assess vulnerabilities of and impacts on these species.

Science is also integral to assessing damage, the fourth of NOAA’s oil spill responsibilities.
NOAA is one of three Federal trustees for the Natural Resource Damage Assessment (or NRDA) process, helping to identify and quantify short- and long-term impacts to the Gulf of Mexico’s ecosystems.

The goal of NRDA is to compensate the Public for injuries to natural resources and the loss of the ecological services they provide. The Trustees consider restoration very early in the process. Injuries are balanced against, and directly scaled to restoration – not monetized.

NRDA combines science, economics and law. It is a restoration-focused, legal process that must be conducted strategically and jointly.

NRDA is a cooperative process. Trustees are responsible for acting on behalf of the public. Trustees work together to accomplish NRDA goals.

The Secretary of Commerce, acting through NOAA, is a trustee for the following natural resources and their supporting ecosystems and resulting services: marine fishery resources; anadromous fishes; endangered species and marine mammals; and the resources of National Marine Sanctuaries and National Estuarine Research Reserves.

Within the first week of the spill, NOAA convened co-trustees to organize collaborative teams to coordinate data collection activities in the Gulf of Mexico and across the five Gulf states.
Three days into the spill, NOAA scientists began pre-assessment activities, identifying fish, shellfish, bottom-dwelling biota, birds, marine mammals, turtles and other potentially affected species. In addition, sensitive habitats such as wetlands, submerged aquatic vegetation, beaches, mudflats, and deep and shallow corals were categorized for further study.

On any given day, more than 40 teams from across NOAA are in the field collecting data on these resources and the impact of the spill.

The NRDA data collection provides the scientific foundation for the tools and targets to restore the health of the Gulf.

On any effort of this size, any yahoo can find instances of error or mistakes, but an intelligent person can step back and see that there was a very well coordinated effort of huge proportions, involving many tens of thousands of people, thousands of vessels and many billions of dollars of equipment focused on stopping the leak, containing the oil and mitigating the impact of the spill.

Image of BP response, showing multiple drilling rigs for the two relief wells, and the rig that performed the Top Kill, Bottom Kill, Top Hat, RITT insertion and controlled the ROVs, also multiple free standing risers, subsea manifolds and the large array of support vessels for the capture of gas and oil.

On any effort of this size, any yahoo can find instances of error or mistakes,

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By reading the newspaper now and comparing it with the newspaper then, for example, any yahoo can find that during all the fancy science stuff you describe there (describe as if it had been planned and worked as planned, even) the reality of what was happening and the official description varied considerably and significantly.

One question the yahoo might ask, for instance, is: Were the scientists making all those rapid fancy forecasts about where the oil was going to go, etc, working with the same bs figures for the volume and travel of expelled oil everyone else was being handed, were they gathering better data on their own without telling anyone or correcting the official numbers, or did they have access to accurate spill rates and plume formation and so forth from the people at BP who were lying to everyone else, but were somehow compromised in their integrity and unable to release the info?

Of course answering that question would best be done via public investigation, undertaken by an independent body with subpoena power and federal level authority. Any chance the attempt at that will escape from the Republican bottleneck, and take form in the big world?